


Junctions

by Welfycat



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-07
Updated: 2012-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-29 03:40:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/315408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Welfycat/pseuds/Welfycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ezri refuses to ask where she is or what she's doing, even if she might never find out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Junctions

**Author's Note:**

> Written for jrmstoughchick's fandom stocking.  
> Content Notes: None. G.  
> Author Notes: Takes place early season seven.

Some days she still got lost on the station. Deep Space Nine was a big place, bigger than any of the ships Ezri had served on, and the architecture was different enough that she could get turned around quite easily. She could have asked the computer to direct her to the nearest turbo-lift that would take her back to the habitat ring, or pulled up the station schematics on one of the wall consoles she'd passed, but she didn't want to do that unless she had no other choice.

It made her furious that she could remember crawling through almost ever inch of this station with Miles O'Brien as they hunted down a circuitry problem or closed off all the hidden passageways that the Cardassians had felt necessary to enclose in places that could only be reached through a maze of Jefferies Tubes. Ezri knew she should be able to tell where she was on the station just by closing her eyes and listening to the sounds surrounding her. Instead, closing her eyes made her stomach lurch; an unpleasant reminder that she still occasionally felt motion sick when she couldn't fall asleep. Like everything else her previous hosts told her she should able to do, the skills they'd learned seemed to only come forth when she wasn't expecting them and rarely when she actually needed them.

The corridor ended abruptly with an access hatch at her left knee and a small window that looked out into the black of space. Jadzia supplied that the access hatch would lead to the auxiliary terminals that controlled the station's life support system in case of an emergency. Ezri could picture the panels in her mind and could remember burning the back of her right hand on a hot coupling when she was trying to get the air filters working again after an attack had knocked them out. Ezri touched the back of her own right hand, the skin smooth and unmarred beneath her fingertips. Jadzia had done those things, not her, and Ezri once again wondered at the wisdom of remaining somewhere that her former host had lived and loved for six years. Six years wasn't that long for her symbiont but for Ezri, with the memories of the station the strongest of those that had surfaced, it felt like an eternity.

"Here you are. I'd wondered where you'd gone," Julian said from down the hallway.

Ezri jumped, only a little, and turned to smile at Julian. He, along with Benjamin, Nerys, and everyone else, was the reason she stayed. And for the war and Starfleet and all the rest, but a lot of it was because of Julian. "You're off already?" she asked, wondering how long she'd been wandering the station if Julian had finished his shift in the infirmary.

"I took an early day. Things were pretty quiet and I mostly spent my time on research. I thought we might try the Bolian restaurant on the Promenade." Julian didn't look away and his smile seemed soft and almost hesitant.

"You hate Bolian cuisine," Ezri said, before realizing it wasn't something she should know. "You find them fascinating on a personal level, but you hate the food."

"You, on the other hand, enjoy a variety of Bolian dishes, and Pell assures me that he's had a lot of practice over the years at making traditional Bolian meals that appeal to humans and other species without their specific tolerances." Julian smiled again. "Would you care to join me?"

Recognizing this as Julian's rather endearingly way of asking if they could go on another date, Ezri stepped away from the window and walked alongside him as they walked deeper into the station. She only hesitated slightly at intersections, letting Julian pick which direction they needed to go.

He stopped abruptly in the middle of an explanation of the treatment of Zar's disease, which had a minor breakout among Bolian colonists during the war, after they'd been walking about ten minutes. "You have no idea where we are, do you? We've been through this area twice now."

"I wasn't really paying attention," Ezri said, which was only partially true. She'd stopped attempting to find landmarks in the Cardassian architecture long ago, and most of these doorways and intersections weren't marked.

Julian turned around and started walking back the way they'd come, leaving Ezri to run a few steps to catch up with him.

"I needed to find my own way out. To prove that I could," she said, hating that her motivations were so clear to herself.

Julian stopped again and raised his eyebrows. "You don't have to try to be Jadzia. Not for me, and not for Captain Sisko or anyone else. You're both Ezri and Dax, but you're not Jadzia. That's not a bad thing."

Ezri looked away. "I"m not trying to be Jadzia. Or Curzon, or Torias or any of them. But I'm not just Ezri anymore either."

"No, you're not. But Dax is the symbiont, you are the host. Don't confuse the two," Julian put his hand on her shoulder. "So, Bolian restaurant? We have reservations."

"We do?" Ezri asked. "How did you know I'd say yes?"

"I knew when I asked the computer to find you, and it told me that you were on section seventeen of the outer docking ring in maintenance corridor eight," Julian explained.

Ezri looked around, their location suddenly seeming far more familiar now that she could mentally place them on a map. "We need to go three junctions that way and then left to reach the turbo-lift that will take us to the Promenade," she said with a mixture of relief and regret.

Julian nodded. "We have thirty minutes until our reservation. Do you want to walk for a little while? There is a bay near here that has the most beautiful view of the star field."

Letting Julian lead, Ezri pushed aside her mental map in exchange for telling him about how she'd gotten lost every day her first week at the Academy. Julian's smile relaxed as she talked, and their hands accidentally brushed together more than once on their journey. Ezri didn't think the way Julian stood so that their shoulders were pressed together as they looked out at the stars was entirely accidental.


End file.
